Tag Archives: content

Don’t be a “copy cat”. We want to hear your voice, your ideas, your work. Be authentic and true. Write with mistakes and correct them later. Go with the flow of your ideas and you will see that it leads you to somewhere that no one else could have imagined or written down. You cannot copy inspiration. Intelligence. Wit. Yourself.

If you do copy. Do so gracefully. State where you took the information. Hat tip your source. Thank someone who inspired you.

If you copy and take praise, remember that it is not professional and you lose moral authority as a person or entity or project you are associated with. Although the source may never find out, you will know that you did and that’s what matters.

I’m working on a project to encourage members of an organization to interact and engage with technology, digital tools and social networks. While most of the members understand and can appreciate the need to use collaborative and new media tools, there are those who question the need to engage with, and have access to, so much information. The sheer amount of information and choices is sometimes boggling. How do we select the information that is relevant to us?

One of the greatest challenges with endless choice is cutting through the noise. Information overload can stop us from finding that piece of information that will change our life; entertain, delight and inform our decisions. Nevertheless, I would argue that being exposed to so much information and seeing things that you might not normally see, expands our worldview and can greatly enrich our lives in ways that we never dreamed possible a couple decades ago. For example, how did I know that a Tweet I saw about the Peter Drucker Global Challenge would lead me to Vienna for two years of enriching debate on the future of management? How can I measure the joy I get from hearing how an article I published on LinkedIn has changed the way an employee is engages with their company?

The role of the curator is becoming increasingly important because it provides us with a door to accessing more content – information, photos, art, music, whatever – that we could love. The possibility of discovering something new has always fascinated the human race and while we may not “discover new worlds” geographically speaking we are discovering worlds that ignite our imagination and encourage us to greater depths and breadths of knowledge.

When we talk about curation, we might think of the museum curator who brings together the right pieces to convey new insights into a subject or theme; an art movement or time period. Curators select, from an entire body of work (information overload), the right pieces to deepen the audience’s understanding of both the part and the whole of a subject or theme.

While we normally think of the curator as a person – the talented human being who works to bring us new depths and breadths of knowledge – curation can also be non-human. It can be an algorithm or a search engine like Google. It can also be our friendly grocer who shows us the freshest fruits or our personal shopper at our favorite store who sets aside outfits that they think we will enjoy wearing.

With 10 million songs in your pocket or 50 fan pages on Facebook or 500 professional connections on LinkedIn, we need curation. Sometimes we seek it in the form of blogs or personalized news channels. Sometimes we find that our friends are our best curators of content. Whatever the source, curation of content gives us more of what we love. It’s the key to making sense of our noisy world and deepening our appreciation for the information that surrounds us.

I have been helping international brands connect with their markets in Latin America for over 10 years. Here are some ideas that I have picked up over the years and want to share with you. Most of them are relevant and can be applied elsewhere – US, Canada, Europe etc.

So, here are some ways (in no particular order or linear process) for you to connect with Latin America and get the attention your brand deserves!

At some point in the future, I would love to delve down into each one of the items on this list but until then, I would urge you to think about your brand (and corp) values and how those apply to what you do. If you can connect with your values and with people who share the same values – especially if they are influencers and thought leaders – then your brand will get the attention you want and deserve. Coherent, simple, organic growth.

Content is everywhere – we are bombarded daily with “news” “tips” and information that is often repurposed and refurbished using the all-too familiar headlines like “5 tips for […] success” or “Top 3 things to boost your {…}”.

I grew up in a family where reading and writing – and communicating – was cherished and promoted. We had a family room lined with bookshelves and we did not own a television when I was growing up. Language, literature and learning were instilled in us from an early age.

So I am biased towards good writing. Despite the trend towards digital and real time content, there is still a growing need for great writers. Great writers can articulate your brand’s beliefs in a product, service and in the brand itself. That’s the connection between branded content – defined as any form of content that carries a brand’s logo, message and / or values – and writing. Good writing = good branded content. Great writing = great branded content.

“We swim in language as fish swim in the sea, not noticing the power that our words have to manifest, to create and to destroy.” This is a quote by Mary Jo Asmus in a recent blog on the “word” in Smart Blog on Leadership.

Why do we need great writers? Because they are integral in building our brand and our following.

On a final note, here is a good article by Dave Kerpen (CEO Likeable Local – Likeable Media) that he published on LinkedIn this past week where he talks about how to become a better writer – and be taken more seriously.